Re-evaluating prenatal sex-selection against females and son preference: practices, trends and policies in India

Sylvie Dubuc , University of Strasbourg

Prenatal sex-selection against females is a major policy concern in several developing Asian countries, including India and China. Over 100 million girls were estimated to be ‘missing’ in Asia, with important implications for society (e.g. marriage market squeeze), policy (e.g. girl child schemes) and the medical profession (e.g. regulation of reproductive technologies, PNDT Act 1994, India). Prenatal sex-selection is generally evidenced by a bias in the sex-ratio at birth (SRB) in a population, WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, and UN Women’s interagency statement has called for new indicators to monitor sex-selection practices. A new sex-selection propensity indicator developed by Dubuc and Sivia, is a more robust indicator for sex-selection practices than the SRB bias. Unlike the SRB bias, which is hyper-sensitive to fertility changes, the sex-selection propensity indicator can quantitatively assess change in sex-selection practice in a population. Son preference is the underlying cause of prenatal sex-selection against females. However, so far, no measure of the intensity of son preference exists. The paper aims and objectives are twofold: 1) to measure and analyse sex-selection propensities across Indian states, by urban/rural populations and women’s educational attainment in order to re-assess the social diffusion process of gender-selection. 2) To propose the first (macro) measure of son preference, building on Dubuc and Sivia’s methodological progress. The paper presents and compares the new measures of sex-selection propensity and son preference. In doing so it analyses the diffusion of sex-selection practice and changes in son preference. The paper discusses the relevance of the results for policy.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course